Cannes a study of contrasts in filmmaking

Thursday

May 15, 2014 at 12:01 AMMay 15, 2014 at 11:03 AM

CANNES, France - The Festival de Cannes, a wise man once said, is not only impossible to describe to someone who hasn't been there but almost impossible to describe to someone who has. The notion proves especially true this year. Opening last night with Grace of Monaco, the 2014 edition of Cannes contains elements that in a sane world wouldn't be found anywhere near one another.

CANNES, France — The Festival de Cannes, a wise man once said, is not only impossible to describe to someone who hasn’t been there but almost impossible to describe to someone who has.

The notion proves especially true this year.

Opening last night with Grace of Monaco, the 2014 edition of Cannes contains elements that in a sane world wouldn’t be found anywhere near one another.

The 2014 festival will offer 3-D versions of both Jean-Luc Godard’s sure-to-be-obscure Goodbye to Language and the massively commercial How To Train Your Dragon 2. The festival will revive Walter Hill’s The Warriors for a nighttime open-air screening on the beach and take Kon Ichikawa’s Tokyo Olympiad inside for a Cannes Classics event.

It will also have a film from Egypt called The Aftermath of the Inauguration of the Public Toilet at Kilometer 375.

And that doesn’t even mention the 40th-anniversary tribute to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre; and National Gallery, a Frederick Wiseman documentary about the British art museum.

Cannes also has a robust commercial side. To that end, Thailand’s Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya Sirivadhana Barnavadi will promote her country’s films, and pop star Kylie Minogue will help Magnum ice cream, a stalwart of the concession stand, celebrate its 25th birthday.

For the second consecutive year, the biggest display has been mounted by a Hunger Games film. Mockingjay — Part 1 has taken over the driveway of the Hotel Majestic with signs in a mind-boggling variety of languages, including Hebrew, Italian and Russian.

For ardent cinephiles, the attraction is the rarefied atmosphere of the festival’s competition. This year, 18 films, including Godard’s, are vying for the top prize, the Palme d’Or.

Two American films are in the hunt: The Homesman, a Western about women and madness co-starring Hilary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones, also the director; and Foxcatcher, directed by Bennett Miller and starring Channing Tatum.